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things could get crazy. Most guys would have stayed for the show. I liked to think he was afraid of being overcome with lust in a public place at the very sight of me. Probably, though, it was his own Puritanical streak and thoughts about appropriate behavior and other such humbug.
    When I stepped out, he was swinging a little half cape over one shoulder and finishing off the look with a wide-brimmed hat.
    “You’re about the sexiest thing since Harrison Ford in Witness ,” I told him.
    “I think they were Amish.”
    I stuck my tongue out at him. I knew he couldn’t help himself, but sheesh.
    Kari swooped in on us without warning. “Let’s take a look!”
    Her eyes went cartoonishly wide at the sight of us, and she actually clapped her hands together like a little girl who believed in fairies. “Perfect! You look almost like the real Mary Warren, though she could never have let all that gorgeous hair flow free. With you it would be almost a crime to contain it,” she said, tucking a few stray locks of jet hair up under my bonnet, though the rest tumbled down my back to my waist. “And you !” She studied Bobby like she wanted to eat him all up. “Gorgeous, even if you are kind of the villain … the dreaded Sheriff Corwin.”
    Bobby looked as sick as I felt. “But … really? Couldn’t I be Giles Corey or one of the good guys?”
    “Few enough of them,” Kari said, the light in her eyes dimming. “No one in Salem wanted to stand against the accusing girls. The few who dared suggest they might be lying wanted to beat the truth out of them. Besides,” she said, her smile creeping back, “Old Giles Corey was eighty when he was accused. You’re hardly that, m’dear. Come on, there’s a tour about to start. Ulric can show you the ropes. No, no, don’t change. You’re perfect the way you are.”
    Bobby was such a white knight, I could tell the Sheriff Corwin thing weighed on him.
    “Don’t worry about being a baddy,” I whispered. “I’d let you interrogate me any time.” I had to stand on my tippy toes to reach his ears. He was kind of magnificently tall, like six-foot. My old friend Becca back home had always complained that short girls got all the tall guys. I preferred the word “petite” to “short,” but as far as I was concerned, all the best things came in small packages … diamonds, charm bracelets, rings and things.
    Bobby smiled and kissed my upturned nose, stroking a hand down my free-flowing hair. I shivered—because he was Bobby and it felt good, not because he was playing a hanging judge and I had the sudden sense of someone walking over my grave. I wasn’t in it, anyway.
    We stepped with Kari into the midst of the tour group that had formed while we were getting all ridiculously retro. The folks at the back turned to look at us, and Bobby and I nodded, but they quickly faced forward again as Ulric called them to order, except for one woman who raised a camera. I quickly pulled Bobby to me, as if I had a secret to tell him, averting our faces. I wondered whether our costumes would show up in the photo without us, or if the whole shot would go wonky, or what.
    “Hear ye, hear ye,” Ulric was saying. “The seven p.m. Haunts in History tour is about to begin.” He must have been standing on a soapbox or something, because he towered above everybody else, and his voice carried back to us. “Your guide, Philip English, at your service.” Ulric gave a theatrical bow, and I thought I heard a sigh from somewhere in the tour group. “I’m here to take you through the trials and tribulations—natural and, most especially, unnatural—that befell Salem and its surroundings in its darkest days. The year was 1692 … ”
    I looked over at Bobby, thinking to ask him who Philip English might be, but he shushed me, concentrating on Ulric’s speech, probably already memorizing it word for word. I was going to need CliffsNotes, and maybe even a cheat sheet, but it was a pretty good spiel.